The Wardman Wire

On television last week, Lord Mandelson accepted Labour are the “underdogs” in politics now; and that therefore they’ll have to work harder than they’re opponents. It sounds as though Mandelson’s been reading Morey and Miller’s 2004 book The Underdog Advantage, on “using the power of insurgent strategy”. Or perhaps Malcolm Gladwell’s May New Yorker article on how David beats Goliath. Morey and Miller stress the importance for competitiveness of imagining you’re an underdog, and of being perceived as underdog; Mandelson’s suggestion that Gordon Brown could propose a televised debate with David Cameron can be read in that context as a public signal of Brown’s underdog status. Gladwell argues that underdogs win, apparently against the odds, a surprising amount of the time, if they’re prepared to commit to an unusual, outsider’s strategy – and to effort well exceeding that of their more fancied opponents.

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Well, of course Labour should behave as though it’s the underdog: it’s true, it is. Nor will it have any difficulty being perceived as the underdog, in the sense of being unlikely to win next spring. And it seems obvious that Labour politicians and volunteers will need to put in an overwhelming amount of work on the ground if the party is to have any hope next year.

But Gladwell’s idea at least goes further than this. His point isn’t simply that a successful underdog knows it’s an underdog. His point is that an awareness that you’re bound to lose in a conventional contest can drive you to adopt an unconventional, game-changing strategy that covers up your own weaknesses, exploits those of the favourite, and evens the odds considerably – or turns them in your favour.

So what might a genuine underdog strategy look like for Labour? What might be the equivalent, for Labour, of suddenly slinging a stone, a non-stop full-court press, or attacking Aqaba from the desert? We all expect a general election to take place next spring. Should Labour go on the offensive, and choose to fight in October? We all expect an election to be fought largely in key Labour-held marginals – should Labour adopt instead the apparently insane goal of making gains from the Conservatives? That would be magnifique rather than la guerre.

Better would be to leap over the current debate about future spending cuts with a set of new and big policy ideas – much bigger than anything Gordon Brown has suggested before, and much bigger than the normal piecemeal initiatives the government puts forward. Labour could propose democratic control of what are now state-owned banks – and over pension funds. It could plan a crusade to reconquer NHS territory lost over the last twenty years – in dentistry, for example, where private provision is increasingly the norm – and break new ground with a commitment to free long-term care as soon as resources allow. It could propose a ten-year plan to equalise incomes and wealth, with firms taxed more or less according to how much the pay of the top ten percent of staff differs from the average. It could announce a revolution in public service, with student fees and debt forgiven, and taxes reduced, in return for a period of service in education, the health service, social care, policing, probation and prison service and of course the armed forces. Going on the offensive in politics – like an outsider or underdog would – means refusing simply to defend a record. It means offering more, and more radical change than your opponents even conceive of.

Still, though, the most radically game-changing step Labour could take would be to change leader. Barack Obama won the US Presidency not in the autumn of 2008, but in the spring: his primary contest with Hillary Clinton involved and fascinated America, and focused Americans even more than the November general election on the choice they had to make. Labour could yet replicate that this winter: Brown’s resignation at the conference could trigger a leadership contest later this year that could make voters look again at Labour, as the famous 1990 “House of Cards” contest and defeat of Margaret Thatcher captured Britain’s attention for the Tories. A new Labour Prime Minister, betting the shop on an election within weeks of his or her taking office and asking for a mandate for a new programme – that would be a real insurgent strategy.

The moment for this may well have passed. Labour has talked of being underdog before, and done nothing about it. MPs refuse to face how likely defeat is, perhaps devastating defeat, if sleeping underdogs lie, and Labour fights the normal, conventional, sensible election next spring under Gordon Brown. But as Morey and Miller say, every Labour supporter needs to

Think about your company in very personal terms. Are your greater personal regrets for the things you did or the things you failed to do? Are your greater regrets for the path taken or the one not taken?